Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow, Discourse, and RGMII. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Let's be kind to each other. Find me
technology trends
The original iPhone was for suckers hard-core gadget enthusiasts only. But as I predicted, 12 months later, the iPhone 3G rectified all the shortcomings of the first version. And now, with the iPhone 3GS, we’ve reached the mythical third version: A computer industry adage is that Microsoft does not
scalability
In My Scaling Hero, I described the amazing scaling story of plentyoffish.com. It’s impressive by any measure, but also particularly relevant to us because we’re on the Microsoft stack, too. I was intrigued when Markus posted this recent update: Last Monday we upgraded our core database server
mathematics
Remember The Problem of the Unfinished Game? And the almost 2,500 comments those two posts generated? I know, I like to pretend it didn’t happen, either. Some objected to the way I asked the question, but it was a simple question asked in simple language. I think what
security
In my previous post, Url Shorteners: Destroying the Web Since 2002, I mentioned that one of the “features” of the new generation of URL shortening services is to frame the target content. Digg is one of the most popular sites to implement this strategy. Here’s how it works. If
social media
Is anyone else as sick as I am of all the mainstream news coverage on Twitter? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Twitter fan, and I’ve been a user since 2006. To me, it’s a form of public instant messaging – yet another way to maximize the
security
In Why Isn’t My Encryption... Encrypting? we learned that your encryption is only as good as your understanding of the encryption code. And that the best encryption of all is no encryption, because you kept everything on the server, away from the prying eyes of the client. In The
programming languages
If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you know that I am a total regular expression fanboy. It’s almost embarrassing how much I love the damn things. I’m pretty sure my teammates roll their eyes every time they see yet another class I’ve
unix
Unix turns 40: The past, present and future of a revolutionary OS is fascinating reading. Forty years ago this summer, a programmer sat down and knocked out in one month what would become one of the most important pieces of software ever created. In August 1969, Ken Thompson (pictured at
distributed systems
Everybody loves BitTorrent. And rightfully so. With BitTorrent, you also start by placing your large file on a central server. But once the downloading begins, something magical happens: as clients download the file, they share whatever parts of the file they have with each other. Clients can opportunistically connect with
blogging
Emrah Diril recently asked me this via email: Steve Yegge mentioned in the comments of his last post that he gets quite a bit of hate directed his way. Fake51: you underestimate the ability of people to get mad. Some people start mad and just take it out on you.
algorithms
One of my all time favorite blog entries is a truly epic tale of dating gone wrong that culminates in the strangest reference to P=NP you’ll probably ever encounter. Joey: So you really did graduate from computer engineering? New Girl: Yes I did, from UBC! Joey: And you
programming languages
It’s pop quiz time! Put away your notes, and let’s begin. a) Do you own this book?* b) Do you know who this man is? c) Does this FAQ look familiar to you? 3) OUR LITTLE FRIEND, THE COMPUTER 3.1) Are there any OSes that don’t